Mizrahi on The Argument from Natural Inequality (Part One)

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Traditionally the argument from evil has focused on two main categories of evil: natural evil and moral evil. Non-theists have well-known arguments for thinking that the existence of both kinds of evil provides reasons for disbelieving in theism. At the same time, theists have well-known responses to these arguments. Although I would hardly call the debate between both sides a stalemate, it is stale in the intellectual sense: I'm not sure there is much more to be learned about the reasons for supporting one side or another at this stage.

That's why I am intrigued by a recent trend in the philosophical literature on the argument from evil. The trend I speak of promotes the disambiguation of evil into sub-categories that either refine or beyond the traditional natural/moral subdivision. Proponents of this strategy of disambiguation typically argue that the traditional theistic responses to the problem of evil don't work for these more refined and carefully circumscribed categories of evil.

A good example of this is to be found in Moti Mizrahi's recent paper "The Problem of Natural Inequality: A New Problem of Evil". The paper highlights a particular kind of natural evil -- viz. the unequal distribution of natural endowments -- and argues that traditional responses to the problem of evil cannot account for this kind of natural evil.

Over the next two posts I want to consider the argument. I start today by setting out the dialectical framework in which the argument is placed, explaining the concept of natural inequality, and outlining a simple version of the argument from natural inequality.

I should say at the outset that, while I appreciate Mizrahi's efforts, I'm a little dubious about some of the claims he makes. I'll try to explain why as I go along.


1. The Evidential Problem of Evil
There are two argumentative structures used in the debate about God and evil. The first is the logical argument from evil, which is essentially an incompatibility proof of the non-existence of God. In its general form, it claims that the existence of God is incompatible with even one instance of evil. In its more specific forms, it points to particular kinds of evil (most often "gratuitous" evils) and claims that they are incompatible with the existence of God.

The second argumentative structure used in the debate is the evidential argument from evil. This one is oft-misunderstood. Many people think that the argument from gratuitous evils simply is an evidential argument, but this is not true. The argument from gratuitous evil is logical in its basic form:

• (1) God, being morally perfect, omnipotent, and omniscient, would only allow evil if it were logically necessary for some outweighing good.

• (2) Gratuitous evils are ones which are not logically necessary for some outweighing goods.

• (3) Gratuitous evils exist.

• (4) Therefore, God does not exist.

The "evidential" part comes with the defence of premise (3). After all, how do we know that there are gratuitous evils? The answer, at least according to most defences of the evidential argument, is that there are instances of evil that seem to be gratuitous and so, through inductive extrapolation, it is highly likely that they are gratuitous. (For more on the distinction between logical and evidential arguments from evil I recommend Tooley's article on the SEP).

I mention this because Mizrahi purports to offer a novel evidential argument from evil that focuses on natural inequalities. But I find myself slightly frustrated in that he doesn't explain how the inductive extrapolation works in his case, nor does he acknowledge the most popular response to the evidential argument, namely: skeptical theism.

At several junctures, Mizrahi fends off an objection to his argument by pointing out that the objection lacks a plausible evidential foundation. Now, in a way, that's a reasonable response: one should weigh up the competing evidential bases here and see which view is most plausible. But it also misses the fact that arguments from epistemic possibility can undercut the evidential argument from evil. Those arguments can't be defeated by simply claiming that they lack an evidential basis, though they can be challenged for other reasons, which I have discussed on this blog before.

Admittedly, this is a slightly nit-picky point. I wouldn't expect every article on the problem of evil to address every possible objection. That would be asking too much. Still, some acknowledgement of this very popular critique of evidential arguments would seem to be in order, particularly when it would affect the defence of one's own argument.

Anyway, I won't mention this again, but you should keep it in mind when you read through the rest of this series.


2. What is Natural Inequality?
Mizrahi's argument centres on the notion of natural inequality, so we must ask: what is natural inequality? Many of us will have an intuitive sense of what Mizrahi is on about, but we need to be more precise for the purposes of a philosophical argument, particularly when Mizrahi's own definition has, I believe, some counterintuitive elements.

We start with the big picture. We are all born into and constrained by circumstances and facts that are, to some extent, beyond our control. We are born into a particular geographical and temporal location, into a particular family, social class, gender, ethnicity and so on. We are also born with a particular set of natural endowments: hair colour, eye colour, cognitive capacity, stamina, physique and so on. Some of these things can be controlled to a degree, but others not so much.

One noticeable feature of our world is that certain people are more fortunate than others when it comes to the distribution of these natural properties. That is to say, some people are losers in the natural lottery. To use examples beloved by Mizrahi, people with microcephaly or with Tay-sachs disease are clearly losers in the natural lottery. They suffer from serious cognitive and physiological impairments; whereas those with normal physiologies are clearly winners (relatively speaking).

The starting point for Mizrahi's argument is that these comparative differences are intrinsically unfair. Why so? Because in order for comparative differences to be fair they must be distributed in accordance with an agent's desert. People should get what they deserve, no more, no less. The problem with the distribution of natural properties is that it is not based on desert. In no sense could you be said to deserve to be a woman, to be ethnically white, to be born with an extra chromosome, to be born with microcephaly or to suffer some genetically inherited disease. It would be bizarre to claim otherwise. If that's right, then the natural inequalities we observe are a type of evil.

So far, I agree with what Mizrahi says. But then he adds the claim that the undeserved distribution of natural properties is an evil in itself, irrespective of whether it causes or leads to increased pain and suffering. Here I think he goes too far. As best I can tell, comparative and undeserved inequalities are only evil if they are linked to some other bad-making property like pain and suffering; they are not evil in and of themselves.

To make the point, consider an example. Suppose you have a world with two people in it. Let's call them Bob and Michael. In terms of the distribution of natural endowments and properties, Bob and Michael are almost exactly equal. The only difference is that Bob's genetic makeup is such that he has one extra nose hair. Now, this is a comparative difference, and it is undeserved (how could you say that Bob "deserved" the extra nose hair?), so it meets with Mizrahi's definition of a natural inequality. But it clearly isn't intrinsically evil. At least, I couldn't make sense of such a claim. If this is right then undeserved comparative differences are not intrinsically evil. The argument from natural inequality can only really get going if the distributional inequalities relate to properties with certain bad-making features.

This correction may weaken Mizrahi's argument since he pushes the claim about intrinsic evil at several points. Still, I haven't rigorously checked to see whether this is indeed true, and I think there is much to the argument even with this corrected account of natural inequality in mind. So let's continue with it.


3. The Argument from Natural Inequality
With a clearer sense of what natural inequality involves (and taking into consideration my correction) we can formulate the argument from natural inequality. Mizrahi does not formulate it in his article, but I think the fairest reconstruction would be something along the lines of the argument from gratuitous evil given above.

So:

• (5) If God exists, He would not allow undeserved natural inequalities between persons.

• (6) But there are numerous undeserved natural inequalities between persons.

• (7) Therefore, God does not exist.

This is currently structured in a straightforward incompatibility form, but it could be refashioned as an evidential argument if we focus on the support for premise (6). This support could, of course, be based on an inductive extrapolation from available evidence, and this would, of course, convert the conclusion into a probabilistic one that would need to be weighed along with other arguments for the existence of God. Since Mizrahi claims his argument is an evidential one, I assume this is how he would like to run the argument.

Now as for its merits, I think premise (5) of the argument is pretty sound. I can't imagine a theist believing that God could allow undeserved natural inequalities (unless said theist adopts some form of Ockhamism, which is a possibility briefly addressed in part two). Indeed, ensuring ultimate justice and desert is an oft-cited reason for hoping that God exists (which, it suddenly occurs to me, might provide the basis for a response to the argument).

Premise (6) is the dubious one. Do we have strong evidence for thinking that the distribution of natural properties is, indeed, undeserved? Might the distribution be justified in terms of some greater good? We consider those possibilities the next day when looking at how the argument fares in light of free will and soul-making theodicies.

Interview: Enhancement in Sports and Education

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Episode 15 - The Ethics of Human Enhancement with PhD John Danaher from Daniel G. Faggella on Vimeo.


Above is a link to an interview I recently did with Daniel Fagella on the ethics of enhancement in sports and education. I have trouble listening to myself so I haven't got the whole way through this yet, but people who are not me might enjoy it. As with all interviews, there were a number of things I wish I had said, and a number things I wish I hadn't, but such is the nature of the game.

I'm game for doing other podcast interviews on any of the topics covered on the blog, or anything I've written about in my research work. If you want to do so, feel free to contact me.

Hedrick on Hilbert's Hotel and the Actual Infinite (Part Two)

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(Part One)

This series is about Landon Hedrick’s recent article “Heartbreak at Hilbert’s Hotel”, which analyses and critiques a crucial cog in the argumentative machinery underlying William Lane Craig’s Kalam cosmological argument. I begin with a quick recap of the key ideas from part one.

In the second premise of the Kalam argument, William Lane Craig claims that the universe began to exist. Now, Craig doesn’t just claim that this is contingently true of our universe, he claims it is necessarily true of any temporal universe. In other words, he thinks that there cannot be a temporally extended universe that did not begin to exist. He supports this with two philosophical arguments against the existence of an infinite sequence of events. The one we are examining is called the Hilbert’s Hotel Argument, which is typically stated as follows:

HHA Type I

(1) An actually infinite number of things cannot exist. 

(2) A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things.

(3) Therefore, a beginningless series of events in time cannot exist.

We refer to this version of the argument as “HHA-I”. As you might have gathered from the name, there is another version of the argument (HHA-II) in which the key premises are formulated in a slightly different manner. We’ll be talking about that version of the argument a little bit later on.

Craig defends premise (1) of HHA-I by appealing to a thought experiment involving a hotel with an actually infinite number of guests and rooms (Hilbert’s Hotel). Such a hotel entails a number of (alleged) absurdities and so is thought to prove that an actually infinite number of things cannot exist. But there are many reasons to doubt this. As Hedrick pointed out, at best Hilbert’s Hotel disproves the existence of an actually infinite number of concrete physical objects. The problem for Craig is threefold: (i) there are other kinds of “thing” that may exist in actually infinite quantities; (ii) events may not be “things”; and (iii) even if events are things, they are not things like hotel guests and rooms, so it’s not clear that it would be absurd for an actually infinite number of them to exist.

This is the position we arrived at by the end of part one. In the remainder of this post, we’re going to cover Hedrick’s more original and substantive critique of the HHA. As he sees it, Craig’s preferred metaphysical view of time critically undermines his use of the HHA. To understand this, we’ll have to do three things. First, we’ll need a brief primer on the different theories of time. Second, we’ll need to formulate Hedrick’s argument against Craig. And third, we’ll need to survey and respond to the possible rejoinders from Craig.


1. A Quick Overview of Time
There is a famous quote, attributed I believe to John Wheeler, which states: “Time is what prevents everything from happening at once”. Although this captures an important truth about time (viz. it orders events into a one-after-the-other-sequence), it is not particularly useful or informative when it comes to understanding the nature and ontology of time. That is a topic that has long puzzled philosophers and physicists. There are two general categories of theories — A-Theory and B-Theory — with lots of subdivisions and variations within these general categories.

One of the most striking features of time from our perspective is the fact that it seems to flow forwards. That is to say, we seem to be moving through time: experiencing the present, remembering the past, and anticipating the future. The A-Theory of time takes this “flow” seriously. It holds that time is, essentially and necessarily, a tensed and dynamic thing; that there is a real objective difference between the present, past and future; and that of these three temporal states, the present has some sort of privileged ontological status. On this point, a particularly extreme interpretation of that privileged status can be found in the doctrine of presentism. According to presentism, the only temporal entities that exist are present entities; the past and future do not really exist.

The B-Theory of time is rather different. It holds that the “flow” of time is more illusory than real: a product of our subjective relationship with time, not a property of time itself. Proponents of the B-Theory hold that the past, present and future have are essentially the same, and so the present does not have a privileged ontological status. The analogy here is with physical space. We can think of the universe as a single object (“block”) with multiple dimensions. One of these dimensions represents time. Just as we can take up different locations along the spatial dimensions, without supposing there is a fundamental ontological difference between those dimensions, so too can we take up different “locations” along the temporal dimension. Indeed, past, present and future can be conceived as different “locations” on this block.

William Lane Craig has some well-developed views on time. In the first instance, he is an A-Theorist and predicates the success of the Kalam argument on the success of the A-Theory:

”From start to finish, the kalam cosmological argument is predicated upon the A-Theory of time. On a B-Theory of time, the universe does not in fact come into being or become actual at the Big Bang; it just exists tenselessly as a four-dimensional space-time block that is finitely extended in the earlier than direction. If time is tenseless, then the universe never really comes into being, and, therefore, the quest for a cause of its coming into being is misconceived.”

(Craig and Sinclair, 2009, pp 183-184)

In addition to this, Craig is (or at least appears to be) a presentist. Hedrick provides several illustrations of Craig’s commitment to presentism in his article (pp. 8-9 of the online version). To summarise briefly: Craig seems to conflate the A-Theory with presentism in some of his writings, and, more importantly, he argues that presentism is the only way to avoid certain paradoxes associated with the A-Theory of time. Hence, he rejects other variants of the A-Theory (e.g. the growing block theory and the moving spotlight theory) and endorses presentism.


2. Hedrick’s Argument from Presentism
Craig’s commitment to the A-Theory in its presentist form creates significant problems for his defence of the HHA (both versions). This is the nub of Hedrick’s main objection to the HHA, albeit he expands on this in an elaborate manner. I’ll consider two versions of the objection here: basic and extended. (Hedrick is a little bit too prosaic in his presentation for my liking. Hence why I resort to these different formulations).

It is easy to see how the basic form of the objection might run. The HHA (and the Kalam more generally) assumes that an infinitely extended past sequence of events entails the existence of an actual infinite. But presentism entails that past events do not exist. Consequently, it would seem like one can be a presentist, and believe in a past-eternal universe, without at the same time committing oneself to the existence of an actually infinite number of things. This is doubly disconcerting for Craig since he thinks such a commitment is entailed by the past-eternal view, and because he himself is a presentist.

This gives us Hedrick’s basic argument from presentism. I’ll formulate that argument as follows (numbering continues from part one):

The Basic Argument from Presentism

(11) The HHA assumes that if you deny that the universe began to exist, you accept the existence of an actually infinite number of past events. 

(12) But presentism is a plausible theory of time and presentism holds that past events do not exist. 

(13) Therefore, if one is a presentist, one can deny that the universe began to exist without committing oneself to the existence of an actually infinite number of past events. 

(14) Craig himself is a presentist. 

(15) Therefore, Craig can accept the past-eternality of the universe without committing himself to the existence of an actually infinite number of past events.

Just to be clear, the most important part of this argument is the inference from (11) and (12) to (13). I’ve tacked on (14) and (15) to highlight how the argument from presentism is a particular problem for Craig, but one shouldn’t take away from this that Hedrick’s argument is a purely internal critique of Craig’s reasoning. Rather, his argument will work for anyone willing to defend presentism.

So much for the basic argument. The subsidiary argument, brings a little bit more precision to the presentist view of a past-eternal universe. Such a view would maintain that an actually infinite number of events has occurred, but that they don’t exist. In other words, the current spatio-temporal reality does not consist of an infinite number of events: they’re over and done with, finished, kaput.

That’s a serious problem since, as Wes Morriston points out, the alleged absurdities in Hilbert’s Hotel arise from the fact that all the rooms and all the guests exist simultaneously and can be shuffled about relative to one another. Nothing like this is true on the presentist picture of an eternal universe: past events are not existents that can be manipulated or re-ordered. That suggests the following argument:

The Subsidiary Argument from Presentism

(16) If presentism is true, and if the universe never began to exist, an infinite number of events would have occurred, but would not now exist and could not be moved about or re-ordered relative to one another. 

(17) Hilbert’s Hotel (which is the basis for the HHA) only leads to absurdities because an infinite number of guests and rooms currently exist and can be moved about and re-ordered relative to one another. 

(18) Therefore, the HHA does not work if presentism is true.

I should say by way of clarification that, although Hedrick introduces this argument when discussing presentism, it doesn’t only work for the presentist. Indeed, I can’t think of any temporal theory that would claim that past events could be manipulated and re-ordered in the same way as hotel guests and hotel rooms. So this probably works for everyone. Still, for our purposes, the analysis turns on the intersection between presentism and Morriston’s complaint and so the two arguments will be treated jointly in what follows.


3. Objections and Replies
Now we enter the lengthy final stage of the analysis: we have our initial worries about the HHA-I; we have our two arguments from presentism; we just need to deal with possible objections that Craig might file. I’ll deal with these in a somewhat rapidfire manner. I’ll summarise the objection, and then describe Hedrick’s replies. I was going to formalise and number all of these dialectical thrusts and parries so as to create an argument map, but, unfortunately, the discussion ranges too broadly to make this an easy thing to do.

We’ll start by acknowledging that Craig and Sinclair (2009) do discuss something like the argument from presentism. But their discussion is flawed because it links the argument from presentism to the notion that past events are potentially not actually infinite. This is misleading. The presentist view is not that a potentially infinite number of events have occurred but that an actually infinite number have. It’s just that those events do not exist anymore. Hedrick concludes from this that Craig and Sinclair have sidestepped the argument from presentism.

In response to the claim that past events are not manipulable and re-orderable, Craig suggests that the Hilbert’s Hotel thought experiment can be re-imagined in such a way that the guests and hotel rooms are not manipulable. Just stipulate that the doors are locked and people cannot move from room to room, and then imagine “what it would be like for [the]person in room one to be in room two, and for the person in two - he could be in room four” (Craig, 2009). This, he claims, still generates absurdities.

For my part, I think this re-imagining of the thought experiment involves an element of re-ordering and re-shuffling of the constituent members of the actually infinite set. Furthermore, I think it still plays on intuitions we have about sets of concrete physical objects. But leave those worries to one side.

Hedrick’s complaint is that this re-imagining creates problems for other aspects of Craig’s defence of the HHA. To be as brief as I dare to be, mathematicians argue that arithmetic operations like subtraction are prohibited when dealing with actual infinities because they generate contradictions. Hence, for many mathematicians the HHA is irrelevant since the absurdities in the case of the hotel tend to involve the prohibited operations. Craig responds by arguing that in the real world we can’t simply prohibit subtractions because people can always check out of the hotel. Consequently, he thinks the HHA still stands since it is concerned with the possibility of an actual infinite in the real world. But as Hedrick points out, if we lock the doors to the hotel rooms so that people can’t check out of the hotel, Craig loses this limb of his defence.

To put it more succinctly, Hedrick thinks that the re-imagining of the thought experiment creates a dilemma for Craig:

Hedrick’s Dilemma for Craig: Either Craig allows for the guests can move in and out of the rooms or he prevents them from doing this: 

• (a) If he allows them to move around, then the Hotel is not analogous to past events and the subsidiary argument holds; or  

• (b) If he thinks they cannot, then he undermines one of his objections to the illegitimacy of subtracting infinities.

Of course, Craig is slippery guy so I’ll bet he can find a way to slide between the horns of this one.
In the meantime, there’s another objection he has mounted which may avoid the problem altogether. In his article with James Sinclair (2009), Craig suggested that as long as you could number past events (starting with the present and working backward), you could generate Hotel-like absurdities. You could imagine taking away all the odd-numbered events and still being left with an infinite number of events, and so on.

There are two problems with this, one of them pretty straightforward, the other pretty complex. On the straightforward side, if all you are doing is numbering the events, and ruling out manipulation and reshuffling, then you don’t generate the same metaphysical absurdities as you do in the Hotel thought experiment; you simply object to the actual infinite as a mathematical notion. That’s not going to be useful in this debate since you’d then have to refute the entire post-Cantorian edifice of transfinite mathematics.

On the more complex side of things, the numbering thought experiment would allow us to generate a parallel argument against the future eternality of the universe. Starting with the present, you can mentally number an infinite number of future events and perform the same sort of operations that Craig thinks are absurd. Wes Morriston, in fact, has already made this argument with a thought experiment involving two angels who take turns praising God for one minute at a time for eternity. God pre-ordains this from the get-go so if we assume the universe is past eternal, it means that the angels have been praising him an actually infinite number of times and continue to do so in the future.

Craig rejects Morriston’s counterexample by arguing that the sequence of future praises is only potentially infinite, not actually infinite. I’ll just quote Hedrick on this:

If the angels will be taking turns praising God forever, then the number of future praises must be the same as the number of past praises given the assumption that they have been taking turns praising God for an eternity. Craig insists that the number in the latter case is actually infinite. But if that’s right, then he cannot deny that the number in the former case is actually infinite as well, since the past praises and the future praises can be put in a one-to-one correspondence. Craig’s insistence that the future praises are not real is irrelevant, since past events aren’t real either on the presentist view. 

(Hedrick, 2013, p. 13 online version)

I have to say, this is perhaps the major stumbling block for me in Hedrick’s article. I almost bought what he said because of the last sentence, but on reflection I’d like for this to be better explained. I can’t see why, even in this thought experiment, the set of future events isn’t just a set growing without limit and hence actually infinite, but the past is a “completed” set with an actually infinite number of members. Admittedly, I should probably read Morriston’s original paper to get a clearer understanding.

Two final objections to the argument from presentism are possible for Craig. First, note that the HHA (if successful) undermines the possibility of an infinite sequence of past events on the B-theory of time. The only advantage for the B-theorist is that he/she doesn’t need to believe that the universe came into existence. But if the HHA works for the B-theorist, why shouldn’t it work for the A-theorist too? After all, wouldn’t it be odd if one’s metaphysical theory of time made a difference to whether the past could be finite or infinite? The argument here might look like this:

• (19) If HHA is sound given the B-theory, then it’s sound given the A-theory.

• (20) HHA is sound given the B-theory.

• (21) Therefore, HHA is sound given the A-theory.

This is a classic modus ponens inference and as Hedrick highlights: “one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens.” In other words, one could accept premise (1) and simply argue that since the HHA is not sound given the A-theory (as has been argued in this post), it cannot be sound given the B-theory either. Certainly, there’s no more reason to accept the first version of the argument than this second version. (This rebuttal is fine, insofar as it goes, but I also question whether this is a credible objection in the first place. It seems to me that it conflates one’s theory of time with the reality of time.)

Finally, Craig could argue that on presentism, past events have some sort of ontological status even if they don’t really exist. More precisely, he could argue that past events have been actualised so, even though they don’t exist, they somehow “belong” to the present; they are part of the actual world because they actual world is constituted by what has happened. The problem here is that this forces a reformulation in the HHA. Specifically, the first premise would now have to read:

• (1*) There cannot be a world in which an actually infinite number of things has been actualised.

But we haven’t been given an argument for that. The Hotel thought experiment doesn’t work and it’s not clear that an infinite number of events “belonging” to the present could generate similar absurdities.


4. Conclusion: Is an infinite sequence of events really absurd?
We have taken a number of twists and turns in this post, but the overall thrust is tolerably clear: if one is a presentist (as Craig is), one doesn’t believe that past events exist. And since HHA-I only concerns itself with things that exist, it doesn’t work against the presentist.

Of course, this analysis hasn’t yet touched upon HHA-II which, as you’ll recall, attempts to argue that an actual infinite simpliciter (i.e. not “an actual infinite number of things”) is impossible. This might be thought to work, even against even the presentist view. Now, unfortunately, Craig’s defence of this version of the HHA relies on the same thought experiments so at least from him there’s no new argument here per se. Still, it’s worth closing by considering whether there is something odd about an actually infinite sequence or number of events, even if they don’t involve “things” that exist.

Aquinas’s famous thought experiment involving the blacksmith, which has been mentioned by Craig in some of his writings, is instructive in this regard:

[Consider the] example of the blacksmith working from eternity who uses one hammer after another as each one breaks… the collection of hammers is an actual infinite. The fact that the broken hammers still exist is incidental to the story; even if they had all been destroyed after being broken, the number of hammers broken by the smith is the same. 

(Craig and Sinclair, 2009, p. 116)

Here, Craig tries to argue that it doesn’t matter whether the hammers exist or not, it is still absurd to imagine a blacksmith working with an infinite number of them. But as Hedrick points out, it’s not clear that any metaphysical absurdities are generated here. Suppose the blacksmith wasn’t working with an infinite number of new hammers here, but, instead, renewing or reforging the hammer using existing material. That way the “destruction” of the old hammer would be built into the thought experiment, and you’d get something more analogous to the notion of finite universe with an infinite sequence of events.

This doesn’t seem absurd. It is hard to fathom, for sure, but hard-to-fathomness isn’t a good criterion in this dialectic since, as Craig himself acknowledges, when it comes to the origins and nature of the universe, all the possibilities are hard to fathom. Where is the logical or metaphysical inconsistency in this example? If we can’t find one, the possibility of an actually infinite sequence of events lives to fight another day.

Hedrick on Hilbert's Hotel and the Actual Infinite (Part One)

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The second premise of William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument reads:

• The universe began to exist.

Typically, Craig presents four arguments in support of this premise: two scientific, two philosophical. Though the scientific arguments raise many interesting points, I think many would agree that the philosophical arguments do the heavy lifting. This is for the simple reason that current physical theories of the origin of the universe are incomplete and hence provide, at best, weak and defeasible support for the premise. The philosophical arguments are much stronger than this, purporting to provide an "in principle" argument for the truth of the premise.

One of the philosophical arguments relies heavily on a thought experiment from the mathematician David Hilbert. The thought experiment describes a hotel with an actually infinite number of rooms and guests. Serious reflection on this thought experiment is alleged (by Craig) to show that an actual infinite cannot exist. This is significant in that if the universe never began to exist, the set of events prior to this moment in time must be actually infinite.

This argument -- which will be formalised more precisely in a moment -- can be called the Hilbert's Hotel Argument (HHA) in honour of its motivating thought experiment. In a recent article entitled "Heartbreak at Hilbert's Hotel" Landon Hedrick has offered an interesting critique of the HHA. Over the next couple of posts, I want to look at what he has to say.

Hedrick's article is interesting for at least three reasons. First, it has a curious, and I think praiseworthy, rhetorical structure. Although Hedrick does not shy away from general and robust criticisms of the HHA, he nevertheless concedes a lot of ground to Craig, repeatedly granting certain premises arguendo, saving most of his argumentative muscle for a subtle internal critique of Craig's argument. The net result is a disarming, yet deceptively comprehensive dismissal of the HHA.

Second, the internal critique that Hedrick offers claims that Craig's commitment to a presentist A-Theory of time undercuts the forcefulness of the HHA. As many will know, Craig has repeatedly emphasised that the Kalam argument "from start to finish" relies on the A-Theory of time. This has led many to rebut the argument on the grounds that the A-Theory is flawed. But if Hedrick is right, these rebuttals are unnecessary, maybe even flawed.

Third, and this is slightly more personal in its interest, Hedrick first entered my consciousness through his blogging several years back. Though never a prolific blogger, he wrote some good pieces on his role in organising the Craig-Carrier debate on the resurrection, and he always struck me as a thoughtful, self-effacing guy. As someone who blogs, while at the same time trying to launch a scholarly career, it's always nice to see someone else making the transition.

Anyway, let's get down to business. In the remainder of this post, I will set out the HHA in more detail, and cover some of Hedrick's initial criticisms of it. I'll leave the argument from presentism for the next day.


1. The Hilbert's Hotel Argument
The HHA comes in two forms. The first of which reads like this (my numbering doesn't follow Hedrick's, he adds letters to code different arguments, but since I won't be going into all those different arguments in my series, I've chosen to ignore them):

HHA Type I

(1) An actually infinite number of things cannot exist. 

(2) A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things. 

(3) Therefore, a beginningless series of events in time cannot exist.

Some further argumentation is required to seal the gap between (3) and the second premise of the Kalam argument, but it's pretty easy to see how that might go. You just add: if the universe did not begin to exist, there must be a beginningless series of events prior to the present moment. We'll come back to the link between the HHA and the Kalam a little later on anyway.

As you'll have noticed, HHA-I focuses specifically on the existence of an actually infinite number of things. The second version of the argument, which has been mooted by Craig in some of his work, tries to broaden its scope by dropping the reference to "things":

HHA Type II

(1*) An actual infinite cannot exist. 

(2*) A beginningless series of equal past intervals of time is an actual infinite. 

(3*) Therefore, a beginningless series of equal past intervals of time cannot exist.

We won't be dealing with this version of the argument for a while, so keep it filed away in your brain for the time being. For the foreseeable future our main focus will be on HHA-I.

Before proceeding, a quick word about "actual" and "potential" infinities. Those who are familiar with the mathematical history will know that there is an important difference between the two concepts. This can be defined as follows:

Actual Infinite: "Is a collection of definite and discrete members whose number is greater than any natural number." (Craig, 2008). In other words, it is a set with an infinite number of members.

Potential Infinite: "Is a collection that is increasing toward infinity but never actually gets there." (Craig, 2008). In other words, it is a collection which ceaselessly grows in size, but never actually contains an infinite number of members.

The distinction is significant insofar as Craig only objects to the existence of an actual infinite. He's quite comfortable with the existence of potential infinite. Indeed, he thinks the future is a potentially infinite sequence of events. Thus, a classic move for Craig in these debates is to reject an opponent's counterexample by arguing that it appeals to a potential, not an actual infinite.

So why does Craig reject the existence of an actual infinite? The answer lies in his analysis of a set of thought experiments, of which the most famous and prominent is the Hilbert's Hotel thought experiment. In it, we are asked to imagine a hotel with an actually infinite number of guests and an actually infinite number of rooms. Such an entity would entail the existence of an actual infinite number of things. But could it really exist? No; a series of absurdities is thought to follow. Consider:

If one new customer checks to the hotel he/she can be accommodated even though the hotel is full. Simply move every guest in the hotel up one room (i.e. the guest in room 1 moves to room 2, the guest in room 2 moves to room 3, and so on). This way room 1 becomes available.

If an infinite number of guests arrives, they too can be accommodated. Simply move every guest to the room that's twice their current number (i.e. the guest in room 1 moves to room 2, the guest in room 2 moves to room 4, and so on). This empties out all the odd numbered rooms. Indeed, an infinite number of guests can keep checking into the hotel.

Odd things happen when people check out. If one guest checks out, thereby emptying one room, an infinite number remain (infinity minus one is still infinity). If all the guests in odd numbered rooms check out, an infinite number of guests will have left, but they will still leave behind an infinite number of guests. Nevertheless, if every guest in a room number greater than 3 checks out, only three are left.

Mathematicians use these examples to illustrate the fact that certain arithmetic operations are improperly applied to an actual infinite, but Craig uses them to argue that an actual infinite number of things cannot exist in the real world. If they did, absurdities such as those present in Hilbert's Hotel would arise. This suggests, to me at any rate, that Craig defends something like the following argument in order to defend premise (1) of HHA-I:

• (4) If an actual infinite number of things existed, Hilbert's Hotel would be possible.

• (5) But Hilbert's Hotel is not possible; it is absurd.

• (2) Therefore, an actual infinite number of things cannot exist.

(Note: as an aside, one thing that slightly annoys me about Hedrick's article is how he names the different arguments. To my mind, this argument would be more properly called the "Hilbert's Hotel Argument" since it is actually about Hilbert's Hotel, and the argument that he calls the "Hilbert's Hotel Argument" would not since it is really just a general argument against the existence of an actual infinite. I toyed with the idea of re-naming them in this series of posts, but decided against it. It would create too great a chasm between my series and Hedrick's article, which might be confusing for those who wanted to read both.)

In the remainder of this post we'll consider how plausible Craig's defence of the HHA-I is.


2. Does Hilbert's Hotel rule out the existence of an actual infinite?
The first thing we need to do is see whether premise (1) of the HHA-I is properly defended. Craig thinks that the thought experiment does the job but is he right? In answering this question we begin to appreciate Hedrick's concessionary and disarming style.

Hedrick says we can grant that Hilbert's Hotel would be absurd. And since Craig uses very similar thought experiments with other concrete physical objects (e.g. the infinite library), we can grant that this conclusion holds for all concrete physical objects. The problem is that this doesn't rule out the existence of an actual infinite number of things.

Three counterexamples suggest themselves. First, what about the set of natural numbers? According to certain metaphysical views (Platonism), numbers are real objects, and there is an actual infinity of them. Second, what about other abstract objects such as propositions or properties? Surely there are an infinite number of them as well? For example, possible worlds can be understood as sets of propositions, and the notion that there is an actual infinite number of possible has found favour among some religious philosophers (e.g. Plantinga) and some not-so-religious philosophers (e.g. David Lewis). Third, some have even argued that physical space is made up of an actual infinite number of discrete points.

Now, Craig, of course, will reject these counterexamples. He will argue that Platonism is false because numbers aren't things, or there isn't an actual infinite number of them; He will argue that modal realism and cognate views are deeply implausible; or that the notion that space consists of an infinite number of points is unproven. But these counterarguments miss the point. If the alternative metaphysical theses listed above are true, then Hilbert's Hotel doesn't disprove the existence of an actual infinite number of things. The thought experiment only appeals to intuitions we have about concrete physical objects. It does not deal with abstract, non-physical objects, where arguably our intuitions are going to be much less reliable. Sure, the alternative metaphysical theses could be wrong, but to show this one must engage in some pretty abstruse and technical metaphysical arguments. There is no straightforward, intuitively appealing pathway from the thought experiment to premise (1), contrary to what Craig seems to think. To summarise this informally:

• (6) An actual infinite number of things can (and indeed does) exist: there is an actual infinity of natural numbers; an actual infinity of propositions and properties; and an actual infinity of possible worlds.

• (7) The metaphysical theories that support these examples are controversial, implausible or unproven.

• (8) Fair enough, but you have the engage with the arguments for an against these metaphysical theories to support that conclusion; Hilbert's Hotel can't do all the work as it only deals with an actual infinite number of concrete physical objects.

This is a modest dialectic, with a modest conclusion, but it does undercut the force of Craig's use of Hilbert's Hotel.


3. Are past events "things"?
So much for premise (1) of HHA-I. In some ways, premise (2) is even more problematic and, indeed, oft-neglected in debates about the Kalam. The big difficulty is that premise (2) assumes that past events are things, much like rooms in an infinite hotel or books on the shelf of an infinite library. But is this remotely plausible?

For starters, it is worth noting that several leading philosophers have denied that events are things. Terence Horgan, for instance, writing on the topic back in 1978 said:

[I]t is a mistake to posit events at all...despite their initial appearances, there is no real theoretical need to posit events. So, since their elimination yields an important simplification of ontology, we should banish them from existence. 

(Horgan, 1978, 28)

More recently, Peter van Inwagen has taken a similar view:

There are, I would say, no events. That is to say, all statements that appear to involve quantification over events can be paraphrased as statements that involve quantification over objects, properties and times - and the paraphrase leaves nothing out. 

(Van Inwagen, 2009, 14)

Bizarrely enough, Craig agrees that this is a plausible view. Indeed, he seems to think that whatever it is that events are, they aren't "things" like books and hotel rooms. As he says himself:

"These things [i.e. events] are real in the sense that they are not illusory, but they are not, properly speaking, existents. 

(Craig, 2011, 220)

But if events aren't existents this creates significant problems for his defence of HHA-I. For if events are not objects like rooms and books, then the support that the Hilbert's Hotel thought experiment provides for premise (2) evaporates. The thought experiment only covered concrete physical things. Note, it doesn't get any better if we switch to HHA-II and its talk of "intervals of time" rather than "events". The problem there is that, unlike ordinary things, intervals of time don't come into and pass out of existence. They merely pass.

Leaving all this aside, problems remain when we consider premise (2) in light of Craig's stated views about the nature of events. In his lengthiest, most recent defence of the Kalam argument (Craig and Sinclair, 2009) he says that an event is simply any change. A change, as Hedrick notes, presumably involves something gaining or losing one or more properties. If that's right, a counter-thought experiment suggests itself:

Sphereworld: Imagine a past and future eternal world consisting of one sphere that alternates between green and red perpetually.

This world consists of one object, but an actual infinite number of events (the colour changes). On the face of it, this seems like a possible world. It involves no outright contradictions or apparent absurdities. Craig could perhaps deny its plausibility by arguing that it consists of an actual infinite number of things, much like Hilbert's Hotel. But, as Hedrick notes, this is an extremely counterintuitive interpretation of the thought experiment. At a stretch, you might say the world consists of three things: the sphere, and the two colours (which might be abstract objects). But you wouldn't say it consists of an infinite number. Counting the events as actual things feels bizarre. Furthermore, Sphereworld arguably comes pretty close to being a plausible view of reality: a finite number of things passing through an infinite number of changes. Indeed, Spinoza argued for something like this. He thought reality consisted of a single indivisible substance existing in an infinite number of modes.

To summarise this line of reasoning:

• (9) One can plausibly argue that events are not "things", or that if they are "things" then they are very different from concrete physical objects like hotel rooms.

• (10) Sphereworld seems like a non-absurd possible world: it consists of a finite number of things and an infinite number of events.

4. Interim Conclusion
Remember, this is just the warm-up. All Hedrick has done so far is suggest that support for premises (1) and (2) of HHA-I (and premise (2*) of HHA-II) is somewhat lacking. This is because the Hilbert's Hotel thought experiment doesn't apply to abstract objects like numbers or propositions; and because events are probably not "things" in the ordinary sense of the term. But Hedrick is still willing to grant these premises to Craig. That's because he thinks bigger problems are lurking when we combine the defence of the HHA with Craig's views about the ontology of time. We'll get to those problems the next day.

The Ethics of Human Enhancement (Index to all Posts)

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[Updated April 2016]

As some of you may have noticed, I've written quite a bit about the ethics of human enhancement over the past few years. For better or worse it has become one of my major research interests. This all started when I wrote a paper about human enhancement and criminal responsibility when completing my PhD (I now think that paper is terrible, but you can find it here). Subsequently, I wrote a (much better) article about the use of enhancement to improve the legitimacy of legal trials. Since then I have published a number of additional papers on human enhancement and the social implications thereof.

In the process of writing these papers, I read a number of books and papers and ended up writing a lot of blog posts. Here's a complete list, in reverse chronological order:




1. Will technological unemployment lead to human disenhancement? (November 2015)
Some people believe that, in the not too distant future, most jobs will be taken over by machines. What consequences does this have for human beings? Michele Loi has recently argued that it will lead to human disenhancement. He argues that this is true if you adopt either a welfarist or functionalist definition of human enhancement (terms that are explained in the post itself):

• Link

2. Interview about the Ethics of Moral Enhancement (May 2015)
A link to an interview I did on the Smart Drugs Smarts podcast about the ethics of moral enhancement. This was a fun conversation that took a number of interesting turns.

• Link

3. Enhancement and Authenticity: Is it all about being true to ourselves? (January 2015)
Erik Parens used to be prominent critic of human enhancement. A couple of years back, however, he wrote a book that took a more 'middle ground' attitude toward it. In this post, I look at one major section of the book in which he argues that many of the concerns about human enhancement can be reduced to concerns about authenticity:

• Link

4. Neuroenhancement and the Extended Mind (January 2015)
This post asks the question: can enhancements to our external environment count as neural/cognitive enhancements? To answer that question I look at Clark and Chalmers's extended mind hypothesis and Levy ethical parity principle. I conclude that there may be important qualitative differences between internal and external enhancers:

• Link

5. Do Cognitive Enhancing Drugs Actually Work? (September 2014)
My attempt to summarise the leading metanalyses and systematic reviews of the empirical work on cognitive enhancing drugs such as methylphenidate and modafinil. Obviously, this is a little bit out of date by now, but I'm not aware of any new studies that upset the conclusions reached in this post:

• Link

6. An Ethical Framework for the Use of Enhancement Drugs (August 2014)
This post takes a detailed look at a framework developed by Filippo Santoni di Sio, Philip Robichaud and Nicole Vincent for the use of enhancement drugs. The framework focuses on the distinction between outcome-oriented and practice-oriented activities, arguing that different ethical considerations apply in each case. I try to develop their thoughts into a flow chart for determining when and whether the use of enhancing drugs is ethically permissible:

• Link

7. Is a Longer Life a Happier Life? Stoicism and Happiness (May 2014)
This looks at stoic arguments against the proposition that a longer life is necessarily a happier life. Stoics believe that a life, once happy, does not become any happier by being longer. I find this to be an intriguing claim since I fancy myself to be something of a Stoic, but I'm not sure I'm convinced:

• Link

8. Thoughts on Truly Human Enhancement by Nicholas Agar (April 2014)
In 2013, Nicholas Agar released another book on the ethics of human enhancement. In this one, he argued against radical human enhancement on the grounds that it threatened certain internal goods that are intrinsic to human activities. I evaluated his arguments in a series of five posts. The link below provides links to each of these:

• Link

9. Can the Mind Stay Young Forever? (December 2013)
Is the dream of perpetual youth simply that? A dream? Michael Hauskeller argues as much in one of his papers. In these two posts I try to evaluate his arguments:

• Part one
• Part two

10, Life Extension and Distributive Justice (November 2013)
The extension of human lifespan is one obvious form of human enhancement. But is it a good idea? There are many facets to that question. One of them has to do with the distributive consequences of increased lifespan. Is it unfair to younger generations to expand the lifespan of older generations? This blogpost tries to answer some of those questions:

• Link

11. Interview on Enhancement in Sports and Education (August 2013)
This is an interview I did with Dan Fagella on the ethics of enhancement in both sports and education. Is enhancement cheating? Is it fair to use enhancement technologies? I present some of my thoughts on this topic:

• Link

12. Douglas on Moral Enhancement and Superficiality (July 2013)
There is some evidence to suggest that technologies could be used to directly manipulate our moral emotions, thereby encouraging us to engage in morally conforming behaviour. Is this a welcome development? Some argue it leads to a more superficial, less worthy type of moral behaviour. Thomas Douglas has responded to this critique. In these three posts I look at his response:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three

13. Can the Giftedness Argument be Salvaged? (April 2013)
Michael Sandel famously argued against human enhancement on the grounds that it undermined the giftedness of life. In other words, because it encouraged us to seek mastery over every aspects of our lives. But why is that a problem? Michael Hauskeller has tried to defend Sandel's claim with notable rigour. In this series of posts I analyse and evaluate his arguments.

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three

14. Nagel on the Burden of Enhancement (March 2013)
If we grant that one result of enhancement is an increased number of choices, should we worry about the increased burdens associated with those choices? Saskia Nagel has suggested that we should. She makes two arguments. First, that enhancement exacerbates the problem of choice overload and thereby undermines well-being. Second, that enhancement increases the scope of responsibility. Though I reject the first argument, I think the second is quite interesting.

• Part One
• Part Two

15. Is human enhancement disenchanting? (Feb. 2013)

When I first read the book Philosophers without Gods, I remember finding David Owens' essay "Disenchantment" to be quite anachronistic given its general antipathy toward atheism and naturalism. Still, it always good to have one's views challenged so I thought I might revisit that essay with a more critical eye. A key part of it is an argument against enhancement, which works from the somewhat nebulous notion that too much control over our lives leads to "disenchantment". I engage with and critique Owens's argument in this series of posts.

• Part One
• Part Two

16. The Reversal Test and Status Quo Bias (Nov. 2012)

A bias toward the status quo could underlie opposition to many proposed plans and policies. This might be particularly so in the case of opposition to human enhancement. Ord and Bostrom have proposed a test for overcoming this bias. In this post, I try to explain how it works.

• Link

17. Doping and Competitive Advantage in Sport (Oct. 2012)

Performance enhancement in sport has been a long-standing source of philosophical interest. Though there is widespread opposition to the use of performance enhancers among elite athletes, it is difficult to find good arguments that supports this opposition. In this series I look at Eric Chwang's argument, which is based on the interests of the athletes themselves.

• Part One
• Part Two

18. Eyewitness Enhancement and the Common Good (May-July 2012)

A few years back a pair of Dutch authors, Vedder and Klaming, argued that the enhancement of eyewitnesses might serve the common good. I looked at objections to their argument in a couple of posts. As it happens, responding to such objections was a major part of my own article "On the Need for Epistemic Enhancement".

• Hauskeller's Critique
• Chan and Buccafurni's Critique

19. Enhancement and Education: Lessons from the Kobayashi Maru (Jan 2012)

This post is a bit of self-indulgent fun, really. People have been concerned about student use of cognitive enhancers for some years, though I'm not sure why. In this post, I draw some lessons from this debate from an analysis of the infamous Kobayashi Maru test in the Star Trek universe. The main excuse for this is to outline some thoughts about the philosophy of rules and the goals of educational assessment.

• Part One
• Part Two

20. Doping, Slippery Slopes and Moral Virtues (Jan 2012)

Back in late 2011, early 2012 I was on a bit of a roll writing posts about performance enhancement in sport. This is one of several posts I wrote at the time, looking at Michael McNamee's claim that the use of performance enhancers undermined some of the central virtues of sporting character. 

• Link

21. Overview of argument against Doping in Sport (Dec. 2011)

Arguments against the use of performance enhancers in sport generally settle into one of three categories: (i) harm arguments; (ii) fairness arguments; and (iii) integrity/authenticity arguments. This series of posts provides an overview of the structure and common pitfalls of each.

• Part One
• Part Two

22. Tannjso on Enhancement and the Ethos of Elite Sport (Dec. 2011)

What is the ethos of elite sport? Might that ethos support the use of enhancement rather than challenge it? These are interesting questions and Tannjso's paper on the topic offers some useful insights. The paper is particularly noteworthy given the slightly unusual methodology it adopts. Instead of working from principles to conclusions, it works from a series of case studies. This makes for a refreshing break from some of the other papers I've read on this topic.

• Link

23. Schermer on Enhancement and Cheating (Dec. 2011)

A simple argument against enhancement in sports and education would claim that it is a form of cheating. But how persuasive can this argument be? Maartje Schermer's article offers a quick and useful treatment of this question. In this series, I analyse and evaluate her arguments.

• Part One
• Part Two

24. Partridge on Performance Enhancement in Swimming (Nov. 2011)

Fairness arguments against the use of enhancement typically don't work. This is for the simple reason that if the goal is to achieve equality of opportunity among the participants to a sporting competition (or, indeed, the members of a society) then this can be achieved by levelling up or levelling down. That is, by banning or allowing enhancement. Are there any fairness argument that are not neutral between these two possibilities? Brad Partridge claims that there is at least one: the intertemporal fairness argument. I look at that argument in this post.

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25. Harris on Chemical Enhancement (Oct 2011)
John Harris is a philosopher and lawyer based at the University of Manchester. He is among the most forceful and provocative advocates of human enhancement. In this post, I look at his argument in relation to the use of "smart drugs" among healthy adults.

• Link

26. Character and the Enhancement Debate (Jun 2011)

This was one of my early discussions of Sandel's giftedness argument, based on the treatment of that argument in Allen Buchanan's book Beyond Humanity? It has probably been superseded by my later series on Hauskeller's reconstruction of the giftedness argument, but still has some merit in that it deals with Sandel's original presentation.

• Just the one part to this (despite what it might say in the title)

27. Posts on Humanity's End by Nicholas Agar (May-June 2011)

Back in May and June of 2011 I started posting on Nicholas Agar's book Humanity's End. The book was a critique of radical human enhancement and presented a variety of arguments against things like mind-uploading, life extension and posthuman values. I covered nearly every chapter in Agar's book, with the exception of the last. This is much to my ongoing shame (I still have a draft post that I started to deal with the last chapter but I have never finished it and suspect I never will).

• Lots of posts in this series, but fortunately this one indexes them all

Book Recommendations ♯10 - Books on How to Write

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(Series Index)

It’s been awhile since I did a book recommendation, so to make up the delay this post offers five recommendations in lieu of the usual one. This time round I’m recommending books about academic writing. Obviously, what with the blog and with my research work, I do a lot of writing. The majority of this writing is academic (i.e.research-based, and expository or persuasive) in nature.

Now, I don’t think I’m particularly good at writing — I won’t be winning awards for my elegant style any time soon — but I do think I’ve improved considerably over the years. And I’m convinced that the main reason for this is just the sheer amount of practice I’ve had. Indeed, if I were to offer somebody advice about how to improve their writing, it would simply be this: write a little bit everyday. Blogging is great for this, which is why I often encourage students to do it. Trying to express yourself clearly to an unknown audience is, I think, a surefire way to improve your style.

Still, practice by itself isn’t everything. Some guiding principles are necessary if you want to avoid ingraining bad habits, and books about writing can be great for finding these principles. It’s important, as well, that when you look for these guiding principles you don’t get too bogged-down in style guides and grammar books. They are significant, for sure, but there is so much more to writing than the words that end up on the page. In fact, those words are the last thing you need to worry about (literally): you need to have something to write about and get yourself to your writing desk before they arrive on the scene. With that in mind, some of the books I recommend below cover those initial phases of the writing process too.

Anyway, without further ado, here are my recommendations.


1. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams and Gregory Colomb
I’m one of those unfortunate people who was weaned into the world of academic writing on the infamous Elements of Style by Strunk and White. For some reason, that book is overwhelmingly popular among academic departments (particularly law departments). This is despite the authors’ rather questionable grasp of basic grammar.

Alas, it wasn’t until after I graduated that I was introduced to this, far superior, book. It offers excellent, sensible advice throughout, without being too prescriptive (a vice that is all-too-common among writers of style guides). It remains my go-to book whenever I think my style is getting clunky. There are eleven editions of it, as well the very similar Style: Towards Clarity and Grace. Any of them would be worthwhile (actually, I have a slight preference for the earlier editions -- as with all these things, there is a tendency for later editions to become bloated).


2. Philosophical Writing: An Introduction by A.P. Martinich
There are lots of books offering advice about how to write philosophical essays — and some pretty good webpages too — but this is still my favourite. It tells you what an argument is, offers tips on their analysis and evaluation, and shows you how to structure an essay. Although it is geared toward undergraduates in philosophy, I think anyone could benefit from it, even non-philosophers. Frankly, I would be delighted if the law students I taught read and put into practice the advice it offers. Many of them struggle to write good academic essays because they don’t know how to present and defend an argument. Say what you like about philosophy, even if it does nothing else, it can teach people that vital skill. And by showing how that skill directly translates into good essay writing, this book is as good a place as any to pick it up.


3. How to Write a Lot by Paul J. Silva
We now move away from the structural and stylistic aspects of writing to the more mundane and procedural aspects. As I said above, writing in general, and academic writing in particular, is a difficult process. For the professional academic there are significant pressures to produce research articles, and to do this regularly requires discipline: you need to get up every day and do some writing. But how can you when you have other responsibilities, when your email is always a click away, and when the expected return from writing an article is both low (since rejection is common) and temporally distant (since there is a significant time lag between writing and publication)? This book is useful for its no-nonsense advice on how to overcome these (arguably specious) hurdles to writing. Two pieces of advice struck me as being particularly useful, so I thought I’d share them here:

1. Have a minimum daily writing target: Silva recommends two hours everyday; other books (see next recommendation) go as low as a mere 15 minutes. I personally prefer to target a number of words, usually aiming for 1,000 words per day. The important point is to set a minimum target that is pyschologically low enough to not seem insurmountable: that way you won’t create an obstacle for yourself. If you can stick to that minimum target you’d be amazed how much you can get done. I’ve even tried the 15 minute per day target and impressed myself with how productive such a short amount of time can be.

2. Make writing an essential, non-negotiable part of your daily schedule: Silva notes that many academics talk about trying to “find” time for writing in their otherwise busy schedules. Typically, they lament the fact that they can never find it (I know people like this). But, as Silva highlights, these very same people never talk about “finding” time for the classes they teach or the meetings they “have” to attend. Why not? Because these things are treated as essential, non-negotiable parts of their schedules. Why can’t writing be treated in the same way? As an academic, writing is just as crucial as teaching and attending meetings, probably even more so. So when you think about it, it’s silly to build writing time around these other commitments. Indeed, you should really try to build those other commitments (particularly meetings) around your writing time.

The one quibble I have about Silva’s book is that it is written for academic psychologists. So once he moves beyond the general tips on writing schedules and overcoming specious barriers to writing, the book becomes less and less useful for non-psychologists. Still, the first couple of chapters make the book more than worthwhile.


4. Writing your journal article in 12 weeks by Wendy Belcher
This continues the theme set by the previous book by providing a more “holistic” guide to the craft of writing. What I like about it is the comprehensive, algorithmic approach it takes to writing academic articles. It does pretty much exactly what it says on the cover, providing the reader with a step-by-step, twelve-week programme for writing a journal article. It’s written in workbook-style, so it’s full of exercises for you to complete as you read along, and it covers everything: picking a journal, identifying your thesis, writing the abstract, establishing structure, polishing the style, responding to reviewers comments, and dealing with rejection. I found it quite useful when I was starting out, and I still dip into it occasionally. Possibly my top recommendation because of the depth of coverage (warning: it is geared predominantly toward the humanities/social sciences).


5. Stylish Academic Writing by Helen Sword
I’m a little more “meh” about this book than the others. On the plus side, it features a nice empirically-motivated, “meta” discussion of what makes for good style in academic writing; it has some actual (though maybe questionable) data which debunks and confirms certain myths (e.g. writing in the passive is not unforgivable; lawyers write long articles); and it is broken into nice, bite-sized chapters. On the negative side, I didn’t find the advice it offered on good style to be particularly useful; and, frankly, I thought it was a little boring at times. Maybe this was more my problem than anything: I’ve read a lot of these things at this stage, and I’m familiar with most of the myth-debunking. Still, it fills the gap until Steven Pinker’s next book, which I’m definitely looking forward to.

Douglas on Moral Enhancement and Superficiality (Part Three)

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(Part One, Part Two)

Suppose you are an athlete, training for the Olympic games. Your coach enters your changing room one morning and offers you a choice. You can either follow a rigorous training program for the next six months, or you can take a handful of magic pills and take the next six months off. Either way you'll be prepared for the Olympic games. Which should you choose?

I don't know what you think, but I reckon many people would say you should choose the rigorous training program. Why? Presumably because they think that the athletic achievement gained through the training program is more commendable, more praiseworthy, than that gained through the pill-taking.

Maybe that attitude is correct; maybe it isn't. It really doesn't matter because the question we are asking in this series is whether the same attitude should hold in the case moral enhancement. Suppose there are two pathways to moral conformity (i.e. conduct that conforms with the demands of morality). The first involves traditional moral deliberation: learning about moral principles, applying them to cases, evaluating countervailing principles and so on. The second involves the use of moral enhancement technologies: biomedical interventions that directly manipulate our moral emotions, thereby making us more inclined to behave morally. Is it less commendable, or less praiseworthy to follow the second path?

Thomas Douglas's article "Enhancing Moral Conformity and Enhancing Moral Worth" addresses this question. It does so by critiquing four different arguments, each of which supports the conclusion that moral enhancement undermines the moral worth of our conduct (when compared with deliberative methods of achieving moral conformity). To date in this series, we've examined two of those arguments and highlighted their shortcomings. In this post, we'll consider the last two arguments: the moral effort argument; and the unreliability argument.


1. The Moral Effort Argument
Does the amount of effort it takes to achieve moral conformity increase its moral worth? Is moral enhancement too much of a quick fix? Before you answer those questions, consider the following two cases (taken from Douglas's article):

David's Case: David finds it easy to conform with the demands of morality. He was brought up in a loving nurturing family "where responsibility and moral sensitivity were encouraged and his role models seldom exhibited...objectionable moral attitudes." He also lives in a society that promotes moral virtues and moral reflection. To be clear, it is not that he automatically conforms with the demands of morality -- he still needs to engage in moral deliberation -- but the process is relatively easy for him.

Felix's Case: Felix was "raised in a dysfunctional family where violence was openly encouraged, bigoted attitudes were routinely expressed...and moral sensitivity was viewed as a sign of weakness". He also lives in a society that does not promote moral virtue and reflection, and which has adopted a questionable normative code. Nevertheless, Felix has managed to overcome these impediments and frequently engages in careful and sensitive moral deliberation. As a result, he is just as good as David at conforming his behaviour to the demands of morality.

Who's behaviour carries greater moral worth? David or Felix? Although both are equally good at conforming to the demands of morality, I suspect many people would say that Felix's behaviour is more morally worthy. What's more, the reason for saying this seems intimately linked to the amount of effort Felix has to put into it when compared to David.

There is an argument against moral enhancement lurking here. If it is true that more effort means more worth, then arguably the use of moral enhancement technologies means less worthy behaviour when compared to the use of traditional moral deliberation. After all, such technologies are expected to directly manipulate our moral emotions which makes it easier to conform with the demands of morality (i.e. it removes some of the psychological barriers to moral conformity). In doing so, the technologies bypass the more arduous and effortful process of moral deliberation.

To state this formally:

• (12) The more effort that goes into a moral act the more praise is deserves.

• (13) Morally conforming behaviour produced through the use of moral enhancement technologies requires less effort than morally conforming behaviour produced through deliberative methods.

• (14) Therefore, morally conforming behaviour produced through the use of moral enhancement technologies deserves less praise than morally conforming behaviour produced through deliberative methods.

Is this argument any good? Douglas highlights two problems. First, despite the intuitive appeal of the "more effort = more worth", it does not seem likely that effort is necessary for moral worth. Second, going beyond this point, there are cases in which it more effort is not even sufficient for more worth.

On the first of these points, it can be argued that our intuitions about moral worth and effort are somewhat inconsistent. Indeed, there is a case for the view that morally conforming behaviour produced with a minimum of effort is highly praiseworthy. Consider the moral saint, who selflessly dedicates themselves to improving the lot of others. One of the things that is so admirable about their behaviour is that they don't fall victim to the psychological barriers and weaknesses that affect the rest of us. Furthermore, it seems silly to suppose that morally conforming behaviour like that of David's could not attract a high degree of moral praise, even if other behaviour attracts more. So, in other words, even if Felix is better than David, David is not so bad that we wouldn't like to have more people like him around.

• (15) Effort does not seem necessary for high degrees of moral praise; indeed, sometimes it is the very effortlessness of morally conforming behaviour that makes it so admirable.

The second point -- that effort is not even always sufficient for praise -- is a trickier one to get across. Indeed, I'm not sure that Douglas does a great job of it so I'm going to try to simplify it here. To put it bluntly, if it were always and everywhere true that effort increased praise, people could do the most arbitrary and bizarre things to increase the worth of their behaviour. David, for example, could deliberately expose himself to moral corruption by enlisting in the Ku Klux Klan, imbibing as much of their bigoted beliefs as possible, and then arduously ridding himself of them. But surely that would just be gratuitous? It wouldn't make his subsequently conforming behaviour any more praiseworthy (it might even make it less praiseworthy).

The point, which Douglas thinks is generalisable, is that only nongratuitous effort will increase moral worth. In the case of Felix, the effort was nongratuitous because he was a victim of circumstances beyond his control; in the second case of David, the effort was gratuitous because he was voluntarily choosing to make things more difficult for himself. The claim then is that, on at least some occasions, the choice of a deliberative method of achieving moral conformity, over non-deliberative moral enhancement will be gratuitous rather than non-gratuitous. It will be arbitrarily making things more difficult for ourselves, and won't increase the moral worth of our conduct.

• (16) Effort is not always sufficient for increased moral praise: only nongratuitous effort is sufficient, gratuitous effort is not.

This suggests that the moral effort argument fails.

2. The Unreliability Argument
The final argument against moral enhancement is, once more, distinctively Kantian in nature. In his Groundwork on the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant presents a famous thought experiment involving a shopkeeper. The shopkeeper, we are told, charges his customers a price that maximises his profit. As it also happens, the price is a fair one. Consequently, the shopkeeper's pricing policy conforms with the demands of morality.

But surely there is something unpraiseworthy about the way in which the shopkeeper achieves this conformity? After all, his moral conformity is brought about by accident; by the contingent coincidence of his profit motive with a fair price in one particular market at one particular moment in time. If he were to follow the profit motive across all markets, it is unlikely that this happy coincidence would always arise. To put it more succinctly: he is following an unreliable pathway to moral conformity, and this unreliability seems to detract from moral praiseworthiness.

Again, there is an argument against moral enhancement lurking here. One concern with enhancement vis-a-vis deliberation, is that by directly manipulating emotions and dispositions, enhancement simply makes it easier to conform with moral demands in particular cases and settings. It does not provide us with the moral knowledge needed to conform our conduct with moral reasons across different possible worlds. Take a simple example. Moral enhancement drugs might be able to reduce violent impulses. In many cases, this would ensure moral conformity. But, as we all know, there are certain circumstances in which violence is morally necessary. If the drugs simply reduce violent impulses across the board, they won't be able to produce moral conformity in those circumstances. They are too blunt and unreliable for that. Deliberation, on the other hand, doesn't suffer from the same shortcoming as its raison d'etre is to produce moral knowledge.*

To state the argument formally:

• (17) In order for an action to warrant moral praise, it must be produced by a causal-psychological pathway that produces reliable moral conformity (i.e. conformity across different possible worlds).

• (18) Morally conforming actions brought about by moral enhancement technologies are not produced by reliable causal-psychological pathways (certainly when compared to deliberative pathways).

• (19) Therefore, morally conforming actions brought about by moral enhancement do not warrant moral praise.

There are two responses to this argument, both targetting the claims made in premise (18).
The first is, as Douglas puts it, an Aristotelian point about the link between moral action and moral knowledge. It could be that by regularly conforming our behaviour with moral demands, we acquire the kind of generalisable moral knowledge that the Kantian is looking for. In other words, even if the initial use of moral enhancement technologies does not produce reliable moral conformity, it will kick-start a process that leads to this. We learn by doing, as the saying goes. The problem here (ignoring the speculative aspect of it) is that this response still acknowledges some force to the criticism: there is still the initial unreliable phase of conformity.

• (20) We may acquire moral knowledge by engaging in morally conforming behaviour; thus, enhancement technologies could kick-start our journey to a more reliable causal-psychological pathway to moral conformity.

This leads to the second response. This one points out that one of the ways in which moral enhancement might work is by removing the barriers to moral knowledge. It could be that one of things that prevents people from acquiring generalisable moral knowledge is the presence, in their minds, of distorting biases and emotions. My anger and self-love might prevent me from seeing the value of charity. If an enhancement technology could work by reducing or eliminating those biases, it might help to lift the veil of moral ignorance. Thus, I could almost directly and immediately attain the necessary moral knowledge.

One concern about this response is that removing psychological barriers is not actually guaranteed to produce moral conformity. It may be that even after my anger is sated, and my self-love eliminated, I fail to see the virtue of charity. But as Douglas points out, this doesn't put moral enhancement in a worse position than plain old deliberation. After all, deliberative methods of attaining conformity are not guaranteed to work either. Reading The Life you can Save doesn't always make people more generous and giving. So we'd have to call it a draw on this front.

• (21) Enhancement technologies could remove the psychological barriers to acquiring moral knowledge, and thereby bring about reliable moral conformity.

3. Conclusion
To sum up, the development of technologies that can immediately and directly manipulate our moral emotions is an intriguing one. It promises increased instances of moral conformity, and this seems like a good thing. Despite this promise, some have objected that the kind of moral conformity that could be achieved with these technologies is superficial and less worthy that the kind of conformity achieved through traditional deliberative methods of moral reasoning.

Nevertheless, as we have seen in this series, these objections have little to recommend them. Either they rely on faulty beliefs about what is needed for moral worth, or they rely an impoverished conception of how enhancement technologies might actually work. In particular, they neglect the possibility of enhancement and deliberation being complements to one another, not alternatives. Enhancements may simply remove the barriers to proper deliberation.

I'd recommend checking out some of Thomas Douglas's other work if you are interested in this topic.


* Douglas presents a second reason for thinking moral enhancement may lead to unreliable conformity. He points out that the success of enhancement technologies may depend heavily on the degree to which a distorting emotion or trait is present. I won't get into that argument here.